Hand-shaved days fall into the pot.
The water fills with starch.
I move backwards & forwards
while sleep reapplies its lipstick.
Enter: blades of twilight.

Eight inches of snow
between the angels
& my skull-cap.

I slide my knife
between the vertebrae of my belief.
Use the bones as my guide.
Borders loosened at the joint,
I can crunch light
with my fingers.
Far off I am being
stitched into the groove
of someone else’s fantasy.
My dreams
hum a low tune.

*

When I was north
I ate elderberries
& read songs about the sea
as the empire of loneliness.
The laments convinced me,
their cold air & hopeless gannets.
When I was north
I dreamt of hares.
Cast stones to strike them
from memory’s dark ravine.
I’m wired to see patterns:
to turn the hip & shoulder,
to protect the neck & wrist.
& know my tells: tapping foot,
heaving chest.
When I was north
I ran through tunnels
low tide brought back
from the underworld.

A man slammed into me
like an Atlantic storm
& it made me a coastline.

Is it possible to write about north
without mentioning escape?
Or fields of lavender, forever.

*

Death cuts its immigrant braid.

Its black hair is strewn
all through the laundry.
New year: I call off
meat again.
Balsam & cedar
ignited—green.
What lives is plastic
or feed.

I’m a bobcat squinting at fire.

There, I did it again,
lived to another winter
turning over
to show its soft belly.

Isn’t it miraculous enough
to have survived to here?

Still my questions follow,
a key aquiver
on the piano.

*

Dear memory—

When will you be done with me?
Every sentence
trails back to you.

I want to be pried smooth
of my callouses,
I want my feet to leave
no tracks in the sand.
Dear memory—
You’ve come to me
wearing that olive coat
that belonged to my mother,
brass button dislocated
in the ocean.

You startled child,
your hair is shorn
kernel-dark.
& still
your lip curls—
& the caves
part their sandstone hands—

pupils dilated in low light—